What else would you call the anniversary of your wedding once you have been divorced? If Alice in Wonderland can have an UnBirthday, I can have an UnWedding Anniversary. So today I did. I was married on December 14th, some year or other. It was a snowy day in a small Illinois town.

Today was another December 14th, not a flake of snow to be found in a large Canadian city. Being in a city has it’s perks on a day like today. I had a bus pass in my pocket, a map in my purse and the city at my feet - for as long as I cared to keep moving. I began by doing what I had done years ago: a long hot shower, some time to pamper myself and a little breakfast. I decided not to shave my legs or wear my wedding attire because this is my day and I’m not out to impress anyone.

There were so many things I thought about doing: a luxurious lunch out, a movie, a trip to the museum, even a bit of retail therapy, but I’m on a tight budget and didn’t want to be out too late and come home in the cold and dark. So I had a fancy coffee, bought chocolates and a lottery ticket. On the way home I gave a homeless woman a donation. I thought about buying myself things I don’t really need. But, I was happy having a day out and feeling kind of pampered and pretty. It was a good hair day and just enough wind to enjoy the sport of hair flipping. Maybe next year I’ll have more adventures.

I know a group of useless men who will answer any question you email them. I like to come up with questions for them. Some real, some in fun but I would really like to find a question that just totally stops them in their tracks. That question that even the Useless Men and One Useful Gal finally just can’t dig up an answer for. It’s a challenge.

I’ve sent in relationship puzzles, current events and of course female questions. They handle them all, some better than others. What would you ask? Can you be the one to come up with the show stopping question to beat all questions? Give it a try, send them an email.

Wrapping paper and Christmas cards are part of the tradition but how about being even more creative and environmentally friendly? Sending online Christmas cards isn’t the same but it’s an alternative. If you buy cards get them in a box, buying a single card will cost a lot more. Plus you will have enough cards rather than going out again for anyone you forgot. Of course, look for cards and wrapping paper made with recycled paper.

Wrap presents in fabric: dish cloths, towels, blankets, scarves, pillowcases and clothing. How about giving presents in other containers such as lunch bags, travel cases, laundry baskets, cookie jars, food storage containers, tool boxes, knapsacks and other things people can use again. It’s a present in a present that way. You can also wrap presents in drawings children have made. Pages from comics, magazines, newspapers and books too dog eared to reuse (second hand bookstores) are crafty ideas too.

Skip the bows and ribbons and go with other reusable things like strings of beads, knitting yarn, garden twine and mittens on a string for kids. Decorate the top of the package with Christmas ornaments, fridge magnets, hair clips, seed packages, sample packs of coffee, photos from Christmas past, anything small and useful or just small and pretty.

Furoshiki - a type of traditional Japanese wrapping cloth that were frequently used to transport clothes, gifts, or other goods.

Not all that long ago, in the olden days someone began rules for email etiquette. Someone else renamed the rules Netiquette. One of the old rules was for email signatures - the few lines of text at the end of the emails you send out. Email signatures used to include links, favourite quotes and even ASCII art.

The netiquette rule was that an email signature should be 4 or 5 lines or less. As an ASCII artist who loved having my own art in my email sig, this was tough, but do-able. I miss seeing the old fashioned email sigs. They were replaced with fancier, bandwidth sucking HTML signatures and now they seem to be replaced (in a way) with social bookmarking which comes at the end of a blog post.

Someone has set the netiquette rule for that too. It’s a limit of five, someone says. It made me feel sentimental for the old email signatures, those 5 lines or less. You can pack a lot of ASCII into five lines, a lot of creativity. Social bookmarking is just another image file. Don’t they seem kind of dull when compared to the old signatures we put so much thought into?

I’m late again this year. This was going to be the year I started NaNoWriMo on time and actually finished my 50,000 words by the end of November. Instead I’m still in the final stages of moving jetlag. Not that I had a jet, that would have been nice, a whole moving crew too.

Here I am nearly a week after the start of November and I have not even begun. So much for my great plan to be part of it all this year. I don’t really like to put it off till next year, again. I did that last year after a slow, late start. Is anyone else joined up and trying?